Friday, February 23, 2024

WikiLeaks Logo

time is the solvent in which 
truth is extracted

the mountains are blue today
last night I wanted to climb out of me

I took an extra pill and listened to 
a bird documentary from under the covers

images from mountain tops
over the city of Los Angeles

to invoke radio broadcasting
it's not fair to me, that open window

feeling I desire so desperately
when I hear a harp or a chime

hot with a breeze
just the wind and I

stone me with precious stones
sometimes I want that too

what made you glitter?
nothing, there's nothing to be taken from me

Monday, February 19, 2024

Darkest purple leaves on the jasmine vine
Stomach on the fritz because wine last night
I kept thinking on the table
that she was communicating with my body in a language I don't know
that she could translate between us, my body and myself
and I felt different characters pass through me who I was too
I felt that them wanting to be someone else 
and I that I could help them 
White flower that doesn’t smell like it looks in my pocket
Wind in my hair in the parking lot
Laying down on the cement
Laying down in the wellness room 
She said she doesn't feel like we always connect
did a gesture to mean just scratching my surface
I can't help the buffers I create 
She can't either and knows it
I can walk back to my desk
with my eyes entirely closed
I've got a feeling
and it's walking
warping*


Thursday, February 15, 2024

Feb 14

it rained all night 
now there is so much 
real or mechanical bird song
spiral in my arms 
if we could just be here
my wires pulsing 
real or mechanical birdsong 
I’m older but younger now
I wish that for everyone
I shower in the morning and use both 
the dove and the rose spray
and the musk 
both real and unreal scented 
bionic eye disks to see the mountains 
seeing the mountains keeps me sane
just coffee and silver cigarettes before noon
just 15 minutes of sunshine
but the fields billow and the real
or mechanical birds sing
the mosquito hawks propagate
rising up from the grass at me in pairs
floating through the chain link

Monday, February 12, 2024

a.t.p.2

I don't fit at my desk
struggling with where my hands go
each task I take on
is slicing up the time
trying to fit into an outline 
just in front and to the right of me
they said there was no future
but after all we're in it 
in it together
after all I know now
I was bitten by angels
when I feel limited
I think of the point you make
of gathering sunlight
of keeping the windows wide 
of batting cages and
upside-down cake
to be in your car
really feeling the road 
sunlight overarching
two spot rainbows
on either side of the sky
I'm happy thinking about 
us each looping the new song
remotely, respectively
life is
it's never what you think it's for
and I can't seem to say it all
and I have to write or 
I'll never know
I'll never know 
but I have to write
dream with frosted orange 
glass zippo shaped like one half
of a butterfly wing
then my alarm
goes off and simultaneously
a map of all my 
relationships spreads out 
in my mind

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Miracle of the Rose

they say you have to burn to shine
there's one of every type of cloud in the sky
the truth is like a stray angel
he thought it was a bird tattooed on his chest
but it was a woman's face with hair spread out like wings

this allegedly dead world sleeps unrestingly
do I prefer akathisia
or sleep paralysis
every day just sort of cracks
all these songs without words
walk to 218 Younglove for lower blood pressure 

excavating the past in my phone photos
love made and unmade
the feeling of motion in my limbs 
it will make me overshoot my efforts 
I’ve dropped the cake before I pick it up
the gravity and grace of it all

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

ford ranger

taking pictures with my eyes
the soft blue and yellow sky
the cypress and oak
the green fields and the red fields
the way the white truck looks 
like a hotwheels from here 
flip off the flag with one blue stripe waving
in front of a house covered by a red and black striped termite tent
thoughts multiplying like needles in a haystack
peas under a mattress
when he plays dead 
face down in the center of the bed
when he goes mute
& i roll him over to pull off his clothes 
driving south is like driving back in time
the hand painted signs multiply
memories careen off the path/past
flip off the mission bells
a hitchhiker standing still 
like a statue with his legs crossed
the time I picked up a hitcher in king city
who smoked meth in my car 
the ferdinands in the field
sun glinting off their horns

Friday, January 26, 2024

smoke letters


my feelings for music
the way the cattails glow 
at eye level across the field

the chiaroscuro after the rain
between me and the mountains

lately flashbacks bringing me 
not just back to 1 parallel place
but 2 or 3 in quick succession

maybe as to illustrate
how little the present knows

Thursday, January 18, 2024

capture:

speckled black and white pets
with red bows on their necks  
and a black and white ball
that color palette

that edible pink sky
the basic human condition
of being plural while walking 
looking at backlit glass waves

pink panther drawn in paint pen 
on the exterior storefront window glass
so he walks in the painting of blue magnolias
leaning dusty in the window right behind

a song like the segment 
in Fantasia when the fairy is
touching the landscape
and covering it with sparkling frost

desperation and desire
visions of things I want to paint
sitting just outside of me
over there out of reach





Tuesday, January 16, 2024

sw

gravity & grace

1
easier to stand in line for an egg
than to save a human life

base motives have in them 
more energy than noble ones

the faculty of feeding on light
my meat is to do the will of him that sent me

wings raised to the second power
can make things come down without weight

moral gravity
makes us fall to the heights

2
may I never sully anything
though I be utterly transformed into mud

to harm a person
is to receive something from them

heaven helps those
who help themselves

even if we kill or torture our enemy
it is still in a sense imaginary

a beloved being who disappoints me
I wrote to him, it is impossible that he should not reply

by saying what I have said to myself
in his name

men owe us what we imagine they give us
we must forgive this debt

I also am other than what I imagine myself to be
to know this is forgiveness

4
extinguish, empty desire
desire without any wishes

to detach our desire from all good things then to wait
then we touch the absolute good

attachment is a manufacturer of illusions

5
the imagination, filler of the void
is essentially a liar


waiting for god

the beauty of the world is the mouth of a labyrinth

attempts to eat beauty

this universe where which we are living
and of which we form a tiny particle
is the distance put by love between god and god
we are a point in this distance

those we call criminals are only tiles 
blown off a roof by the wind
and falling at random

nailed to the center of the universe

MRSDWVW


1
a touch of the bird about her
of the jay 
blue-green, light, vivacious

first a warning; musical
then the hour; irrevocable
the leaden circles dissolved in the air

can't be dealt with by acts of parliament
for that very reason
they love life

2
because it was silly to have other reasons
for doing things
half the time she did things not simply
not for themselves 
but to make people think this or that
perfect idiocy

one roll of tweed
a few pearls
salmon on an ice block
that is all

a lady is known
by her shoes and her gloves

the moment between 6 and 7
when every flower 
glows
every flower seems to burn by itself

the world has raised its whip
where will it descend?

a square of dove gray
this gradual drawing together of everything
to one center before his eyes 
terrified him

3    
sifting the ruins of time
when London is a grass grown path
and all those hurrying along the pavement this Wednesday
are but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust

a single voice
expanded and made sonorous
by the might of a whole cathedral

thought of the housemaids
the innumerable housemaids
the bedrooms
the innumerable bedrooms

white smoke actually writing something
making letters in the sky

standing and looking up into the sky
bells struck 11 times

tears filled his eyes as he looked at the smoke words
languishing and melting in the sky
bestowing upon him in their inexhaustible charity and laughing goodness
one shape after another
of unimaginable beauty
for nothing
for ever 
for looking merely
with beauty
it was toffy
they were advertising toffy

plumes on horses heads
feathers on ladies
would have sent him mad
but he would not go mad

4
part of the pattern
sounds made harmonies with premeditation
the spaces between them were as significant as the sounds
all taken together it meant the birth of a new religion

men must not cut down trees
there is a god

there is no death

look look
notice real things
he must not talk aloud 
to himself out of doors

eating drinking and mating
the bad days and good

seeking and questing
and knocking of words together

5
gilded her own future with calm
grinding blowing flowering of the day

narrower and narrower would her bed be
something warm that broke up surfaces

she could not resist sometimes yielding to the charm of a woman
faint scent or a violin next door
so strange is the power of some sounds at certain moments
she did undoubtedly feel what men felt

6
the purity
the integrity
doing her hair in a kind of ecstasy 
now the old feelings began to come back to her
as she took out her hairpins
laid them on the dressing table
began to do her hair

one woman who sat in her drawing room 
and made a meeting point

far away barking and barking

8
she still had the power 
to make the moon rise on the terrace 

9
it was smashed to atoms
his fun 
for it was half made up as he knew very well
made up as one makes up the better part of life
making oneself up
making her up

odd it was and quite true
all this one could never share
it's smashed to atoms

a great brush swept smooth against his mind
down down he sank into the plumes and feathers of sleep

nothing exists outside us except a state of mind

10
the death of the soul
the words attached themselves 
to some scene some room some past he had been dreaming of

it all seemed useless
going on being in love
going on quarreling
going on making it up

11
still the sun was hot
still one got over things

12
good days bad days
for no reason whatever

13
jealousy which survives every other passion of mankind
once in some primeval May she had walked with her lover
the bright petalled flowers were hoar and silver frosted

14
it was a silly silly dream 
being unhappy

the happiest man in the world
and the most miserable

he could not feel
it might be possible 
that the world itself is without meaning

that boy's business of the intoxication of language
how Shakespeare loathed humanity
the message hidden in the beauty of words

15
plastered over with grimaces
his wife was crying and he felt nothing

once you stumble
human nature is on you

food was pleasant
the sun hot

12 o'clock
the leaden circles dissolved in the air

16
he never spoke of madness
he called it, "not having a sense of proportion"

love
trees
there is no crime

this exacting science
which has to do with what
after all, we know nothing about

worshipping proportion
penalizing despair
prophetic Christs and Christesses

17
shredding and slicing
dividing and subdividing
the clocks nibbled at the June day

the table spreads itself voluntarily
with glass and silver

18
drowsy and heavy
like a field of clover in the sunshine

and they went further and further from her
being attached to her by a thin thread
that would stretch and stretch
get thinner and thinner 
as they walked across London
as if one's friends were attached to one's body
by a thin thread
which as she dosed became hazy with the sound of bells
striking the hour or ringing to service
as a single spider's thread is blotted with raindrops
and burdened, sags down

19
first the warning, musical
then the hour, irrevocable

 but why did she suddenly feel
for no reason she could discover
desperately unhappy?

what she liked was simply life
an offering for the sake of offering

could not think
write 
even play the piano
talked oceans of nonsense

20
instead of lying on a sofa
she should have been in a factory
behind a counter

21
all the commodities of the world
perishable and permanent

a soul cut out of immaterial substance
not a woman, a soul

people were beginning to compare her to poplar trees
early dawn
hyacinths, fawns, running water, and garden lilies 

22
the trees dragged their leaves 
like nets through the depths of the air

24
life was good
the sun hot

it seemed to her as she drank the sweet stuff
that she was opening long windows
stepping out into some garden

I have that in me
which could now dissolve in tears
why heaven knows
beauty of some sort probably
and the weight of the day
the drip drip of one impression after another

a moment in which things came together
this ambulance and life and death

a theory heaps of theories
she felt herself everywhere
not here here here 
but everywhere
to know her or anyone 
one must seek out the people that completed them
even the places

our apparitions
the part of us which appears
are so momentary 
compared with the other
the unseen part of us
which spreads wide
the unseen might survive
be recovered somehow
attached to this person or that
or even haunting certain places after death
perhaps
perhaps

26 
the day changed
shed dust heat color
I resign the evening seemed to say
I fade
I disappear 

this interminable life

here he was 
starting to go to a party
with the belief upon him that he was about to have an experience
but what?
beauty anyhow
straightness and emptiness
the symmetry of a corridor

everybody was going out

the cold stream of visual impressions failed him now
as if the eye were a cup that overflowed

29
in the middle of my party
here's death

the terror
the overwhelming incapacity
one's parents giving it into one's hands
this life
to be lived to the end
to be walked with serenely

there was in the depths of her heart
an immeasurable fear

a dusky sky
turning away its cheek in beauty

the clock began striking
the young man had killed himself
but she did not pity him
with the clock striking the hour
1 2 3
she did not pity him
with all this going on

fear no more the heat of the sun

she felt somehow very like him
the young man who had killed himself
she felt glad that he had done it
thrown it away

the clock was striking
the leaden circles dissolved in the air

he made her feel the beauty
made her feel the fun

30
indeed the young are beautiful
she was like a lily
a lily by the side of a pool

one could watch
one could understand
and one did not lose the power of feeling

it increased
it went on increasing

what does the brain matter
compared to the heart?

what is this terror?
what is this ecstasy? 

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

oct - dec

lost contact with my dreams
tall apartment/ vertical shopping mall Chinese signage 
all the images I cut out from National Geographic
raspberry jam on toast again
everything from that store tastes like that store
he doesn't know but refrains I'll figure it out
I was just liking the cutting 
lost in the cutting so 
I had nothing to say

a translucent snail emerged from the tiny white shell 
days after M brought it home from Greece
she feeds it cucumber and eggshells

there are only 5 places to go here
try to notice things
the sunset on the way home
October light, definitely different
definitely shifted
me, the clone of my mother
sharing my tiny bed with her
the two of us reading side by side
the two of us sleeping

strip mall on a mountain
in a bathtub at one point but 
I could see beyond the walls 
of the space in my mind's eye/
was in two places at once
woke up with the headache I had in the dream 
wearing a red gingham jacket
my hair long again
there was rain and other obstacles
like no money? or just darkness?

working in a new restaurant that was hidden 
in some sort of subway system but had a giant dome
restaurant inside an unbroken eggshell
trying to figure out what to do about the swings
hanging from the curved ceiling 
hitting the tables when they swung
something shady about the owner
I was concerned the room was too big to fill
these days a continuum 
like waking life isn't enough
to take away dream solidity 
pieces come to me and 
I can't even distinguish them as such

I ran out of potions and have to pick up more today
I want to be stronger and more sparkly for everyone
pearls around the window
sunset in the letters
you send just an orange heart
sensed I was thinking about you?
I want to be big and sparkly for you
I want to be the one you call

15 days of war on Palestine
screen time average nearly 4 hours a day somehow
we were in a band and had a metal shelf between us 
that held up our cigarettes and also water dripped from the shelf 
and when it fell it sounded like violins 
the shelf with the smokes and water dropping was our instrument
and I was playing a simple riff on a red electric guitar
wearing a very little dress
we were practicing and it was going well then it was abruptly 
the actual performance and we got out of synch 
and couldn't get through our set everyone cleared the room 
so we took our half smoked cigarettes outside

finally got ahold of you
followed gravity downtown while we talked 
on damp streets the rain had stopped but it was misting
wish I had ideas in my head

everything on guitar is sounding the same to me
how to push through and trust again? play?
or did I ever trust? hard to say
remember crying in frustration on the farm

tiny deer standing on my bed
it was smaller than a cat
looked like a doll/ toy I sang to it while petting it
and walked around it in circles filming
something happened to the tiny deer
I saw images of butchered meat but
not fully real mostly imagined 
I found just her collar which was patent leather
bright red with metal grommets 
I was in a bathrobe
it was all an art piece?
at night in my bed I think about Gazans
trying to sleep waiting for bombs

a music class with keyboard 
and songbook and time to practice
looking for the key that will unlock 
whatever the next thing to get me going will be
an entry point to the world
some way to stay in it

Chinatown walking around
buying egg custard and metallic purple Beatle boots
with two dogs, a giant wolf and a mini wolf
steps down to the beach at the end of University Ave in Berkeley
the waves crashing so high
covering the entire beach and all the way up to the cliffs
the rest is very slippery
very very slippery
resistance fighters broke out of Gaza
into an "ugly modern world"
with wide avenues and bars with lights on

how many things can I do every day?
war dreams, separated, all alone, distance and death
dilapidated structures
I was raising a child alone
I was applying black and white temporary tattoos to my stomach
a masked face of a friend
layered tattoos on my stomach to express my love
but feeling so alone
barred from tenderness by war

thinking about how walking used 
to feel in my hometown
thinking about how reading used to feel 
in the dark winter on a humming train
in the segment of tunnel under the bay
between Oakland and SF 
Nijinsky's diary
how writing used to feel in my hometown

I work in an office building surrounded 
by empty industrial fields of grasses and cattails 
and crows and from certain windows you can see the ocean

in my dreams I am bleeding
I am walking to get something to eat in a Japanese structure
summer camp pagoda bridge over a dry riverbed
groups divided up of people with bottles 
of champagne with beautiful labels
holographic red and pink photo of cherry/logo/star
there is a porridge with icicle covered candy in it
I am showing you a secret trail I know about
I am making memories in here


Monday, December 11, 2023

bitten by angels

 













my pills do my sleeping for me
our love is growing up
a dial tone deep in my ear
who is the god that lets the leaflets fall
I want to be stronger than the office building
the proper name of god is a list
don't forget to move your hands to reach the notes
don't forget backwards music
set up the dripping laptop at the desk
and leave it open to capture

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

60 days


 

















realism brandished
as a weapon against meaning

something warm
that breaks up surfaces

vigorous, unending
my future













Monday, October 23, 2023

/ˈlakrəˌmōs/

the design of the pelican which has 
remained largely unchanged for 30,000 years

the cruelty of the world was tranquil
the murder was deep

attempting to fill my head with 
things of beauty and value

imagine leaflets falling from the sky
but at birth I was bitten by angels

I'm afraid when my alarm 
goes off in the morning





Wednesday, October 4, 2023

irresistible experience



dream of seeing you in your life

dream that everyone looked old

dream that we congratulated each other


guess who’s opening their heart 


guess who

is opening their heart


there was a crescent moon tonight made of paper

a digital sky


a dream that privacy felt scarce

dream i had time to bring my hitachi


but dream i was at your party too late looking for containers

to bring everyone home and


dream my identity was impossible to conceal so


i choose you 

as my archivist

and you, my archeologist

excavate my photo booth

and faithfully, wash the gossip


dream we did it together when


a pure bold longing 

to be gone filled him


and i said dream! it has filled me too

but it has 

filled me too


and i spilled that it’s my last life


spilled it’s my last life all over your bed

as my conscious and un- met in one horizon

one horizon bobbing and blue 

and you wept, for what?


but, i said, i just wanna fuck 

and dream no one is home


i just wanna fuck because

i can love you from there


guess who 

can love you from there 



fortify me


don’t 11th hour me,

fortify me!


the easy slippage

of You—

(god)


all of you, with your milks


fortify me, bones, let me 

sign your constitution 

tour me around 

your reality


walk me down the road and up the hill

bring me back to the staring sheep


churn to fuel the painfully simple


and draw my shadow with 

confidence in the sun


don’t 11th hour me, convect me!


don’t let my dread whittle to an edge 

don’t let my obsession get so smooth 


waterproof my pants in the machine

and 


kiss me like, like 

I kiss you


let me play in the alphabet soup!

let me find language in the drain!

and on occasion, 


save me a slice of joy from the spreadsheet 



(Pleasure) Poem 1


must be

systemless

the circuit itself tired 

a sound sculptural shell


who am I? to love

the mountain hanging over me


to drink its snow


she says deserve  dear god,

 

as long as i’m evicted from myself

make me a silver ray of light


make me finish the body scan

make it all right side out


quitting the whole time til thighs


my nerves as pants no socks 

mocked by the waterfalls I lay 

on you in easy gratitude for your 

bones, hold your feet 

in my hands




Friday, September 29, 2023

55 n 11th st

at Brighton beach 
swimming towards the moving buoy 

we're definitely a piece
but we're only a part

watching our progress through Cherry Hill on Google maps 
passing the liquor stores that line the turnpike
 
going back on my word here I am
wanting to invoke Banana Ice


Wednesday, September 6, 2023

honeying malice





a brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella

rings for your fingers a drink for your heart